Capability maturity models towards improved quality of the sustainable development goals indicators data

Abstract

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demands coping with the data revolution for sustainable development: the integration of new and traditional data to produce high-quality information that is detailed, timely, and relevant for multiple purposes and to a variety of users. The quality of this information, defined by its completeness, uniqueness, timeliness, validity, accuracy, and consistency, is crucial for appropriate decision making; which leads to improvements in advancing national development imperatives for reaching the goals and targets of the sustainable development agenda. In this paper, we posit that the more mature the organizations within the national data ecosystems are, the higher the quality of data that they produce. The paper motivates for the adoption and mainstreaming of organizational Capability Maturity Models within the SGDs activities. It also presents the preliminary formulation of a multidimensional prescriptive Capability Maturity Model to assess and improve the maturity of organizations within national data ecosystems and, therefore, the effective monitoring of the progress on the SDG targets through the production of better quality indicators data. Furthermore, the paper provides recommendation towards addressing the challenges within the increasingly data-driven domain of social indicators monitoring.